Do hand dryers hurt kids’ ears? A 13-year-old Canadian girl found out and had her study published

Hand dryer in a public restroom. (Massimo Merlini/Getty Images/iStockphoto)

“Do hand dryers hurt kids’ ears?”

That’s the question 13-year-old Nora Keegan of Canada asked and successfully answered. Her results were sound enough to be published in the academic journal Paediatrics & Child Health.

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Nora traveled around her hometown of Calgary for more than a year investigating hand dryers in public restrooms.

She told the Calgary Eyeopener podcast that her own experiences with hand dryers led her to start the research.

“In Grade 4, I noticed that my ears kind of hurt after the hand dryer,” Keegan said. “And then later, at the start of Grade 5, I also noticed that my ears were hurting after I used the hand dryer. So then I decided to test it to see if they were dangerous to hearing, and it turns out they are.”

After checking online to see if manufacturers disclosed how they measure noise estimates for the dryers and finding nothing, she decided to find out for herself.

Nora 44 hand dryers in public restrooms for peak sound levels in relation to children’s ear canal heights. Each dryer was measured at 10 different combinations of heights and distances from the wall and with and without hands in the air stream, for a total of 20 measurements per dryer.

Her study concluded that many hand dryers, regardless of manufacturer, operate at levels far louder than 100 decibels — the maximum allowable noise for products meant for children — making them dangerous for a child’s hearing.